Medical Apps Come Packaged with Hardcoded Credentials

Two popular applications for medical records management contain hidden user accounts with hard-coded credentials that could be abused by hackers, a researcher has found.

Rapid7 today published a report on the newly discovered security vulnerabilities (CVE-2018-5551 and CVE-2018-5552) in DocuTrac's electronic medical record (EMR) software QuicDoc and Office Therapy billing software. DocuTrac software runs at some 5,000 healthcare practices, including county and state mental health facilities, employee assistance programs, behavioral health, and other facilities.

Three user accounts are created when the software is installed, and these accounts have high levels of access to the database, according to Rapid7, who handled the vuln disclosure on behalf of the independent researcher who discovered the flaws. The administrator setting up the software is neither warned of these accounts' existence nor has an option to change the passwords.

In addition, QuickDoc and Office Therapy use a single, hard-coded salt string for encryption. It's not clear precisely how much of the data stored by the system is encrypted, according to Rapid7, but it is clear that whatever is encrypted is less secure than it should be.

DocuTrac has been notified of the vulnerabilities and has not yet released a patch. In the meantime, Rapid 7 recommends limiting physical access to systems that can be used to log into the applications.

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